Possible Rush Infractions at Dartmouth
 

Possible sorority rush violations are being investigated at Dartmouth, according to the October 18 student paper. There seems to be puzzlement about the "umpteen zillion" Panhellenic recruitment rules, which makes me wonder why they don't just call our own PenguinTrax or the other GCers who are experts. :D A few excerpts from the article are below; the entire story is at:
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article....=2005101801010

Panhellenic Council officers have launched an investigation, they said, to determine whether members of Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority committed rush infractions last Thursday when they crashed Sigma Delta sorority's bid acceptance night and allegedly discussed offering two new Sigma Delt members open bids to KDE.
KDE Rush Chair Grace Crandall '06 and KDE members Raina Hammel '07, Nicola Korzenko '07 and Charlotte Taylor '07 also allegedly made phone calls to the two sophomores after they had already accepted bids to Sigma Delt.
Sororities can only offer open bids to women who either did not participate in the rush process or did not receive a bid from any organization, according to Panhell's rules.
"As far as I am aware, [the KDE members] did not in fact offer open bids but instead discussed them as a possibility, and this action was the crucial mistake they made," KDE President Edy Wilson '06 said. "These women were acting on misinformation combined with a misunderstanding of both KDE and Panhellenic bid rules."
Wilson said Korzenko's involvement was "minor compared to the others" and that the KDE members "strongly regret their actions and the subsequent ramifications."
. . . Sigma Delt President Christina Duncan declined to comment. . . .
Panhell Vice President for Recruitment Zobeida Torres '06, who was responsible for the sorority rush process, said Sigma Delt rush chairs first notified her of the incident soon before 10 p.m. last Thursday.
"It's kind of weird," Torres said. "I don't think it's happened before." . . .
Kristen Wong '06, Panhell's vice president of organization, handles judicial affairs for the organization but said she was not yet familiar with the details of the episode. . . .
Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman said that he had not heard about the bid incident, but it "sounds like a pretty big issue if in fact that's what happened."
. . . "National Panhellenic has umpteen zillion rules -- it's a very structured process," Redman said. . . .
Redman acknowledged that most of Panhell's officers have never handled a rush violation issue, which makes it more difficult for them to navigate the complicated rush rules set by the National Panhellenic Council. . . .

Neither of these organizations are NPC sororities, so they don't have to follow NPC rules--- if they are locals, then they most likely have their own constiutions to follow. However, offering rival bids to new members at their own new member party isn't really very tactful nor in good taste, for lack of a better term. It lacks class.

Good point, adpiucf. The local sororities at Dartmouth do participate in formal recruitment with the NPC sororities, and are members of the Dartmouth Panhellenic Council along with the NPC chapters. I don't know whether they have agreed to operate recruitment under the NPC policies and guidelines, however.

although they are not NPC, it appears they are in the same council and most likely had to agree to follow NPC Unanimous agreements and recruitment rules. i have a local at my campus and they are required to follow NPC guidelines. they are given a MOI (green book) and we cover the rules, so they are familar with rules and expectations.

what's more interesting is the website for the one local not mentioned. it's history is a little odd to me. In short....they were an interest group, then affiliated with Kappa Alpha Theta, didn't like all those rules they had to follow from HQ, so dropped affiliation with Theta. Kept their chapter designation and part of Theta as their name....Epsilon Kappa Theta b/c they still wanted to be called Theta's. That is just the weirdest thing to me. sorry to hijak the OP.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ekt/

We've already discussed EKT on here.

It sounds like these members of KDE just didn't understand what was happening which if they have a young chapter and no national to guide them in rush rules, I don't think it was done with malicious intent.

Yes, it's likely that the members allegedly involved just didn't understand what was and what wasn't permissible. While it's true they have no national, they aren't "brand-new" young; their founding goes back to 1993. At least that's what their web site says:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~kde/

I didn't mean the age of the chapter, I meant if most of the members of the chapter have only pledged in the last year or so. Remember this is a school where lots of people do junior year abroad and that has that whole goofy system where you can take random trimesters off.

They've been around long enough to know better, though--- don't you agree? It just smacks of poor sportsmanship. Even if they were younger members... they know that a "sorority is for a lifetime" and you don't go crashing your rivals events, promising bids to their new sisters! Even without a national hq or advisory board, I can't see how any chapter exec would think this was a good idea-- probably the work of a few members without the consent of the chapter president.

I'm sorry, no National HQ would have stopped them from crashing. I mean do we seriously think they would have called up and said "Hi, we're the chapter from Dartmouth, is it ok to crash and attempt to steel pledges from another org..??" These girls are smart, Dartmouth is not a diploma mill, it attracts intelligent women who should know better. They probably, with some level of knowledge of the rules, decided to be aggressive.

If a local joins the campus Pan-hell, they are given help by the regional NPC person to help aquaint themselves with the rules. If they couldn't get a hold of her, I think they learned to read in the first grade, if you read the rules, it is quite obvious that this behavior would not be ok.

Poor sportsmanship, bad taste, rudeness, TACKY TACKY TACKY, and it has nothing to do with being against the rules.

One set of local groups on my own campus has no Panhellenic-type organization; the presidents just convene to coordinate scheduling during the recruitment period. Thus, there really are no rules. One year, within a week or two after the new members were accepted and initiated, one group began recruiting the most desirable freshman in another group (a girl they'd cut on the last night!). There was no written rule against that, but everyone, the targeted freshman included, thought it was in appallingly bad taste. I'm disgusted with that group to this day for doing something so obnoxious.

So I don't think knowledge or ignorance of the rules determines whether this behavior at Dartmouth was blameworthy. It would be really rude and inappropriate even if there WERE no rules.

Seriously!

I can't imagine girls not realizing that this is out of line. Even if it weren't against the rules, how stupid do you have to be to not realize that it's inappropriate?